Bargaining
by Rehaniah
Summary: A smuggling ship is taken captive by the Narada and Ayel takes a shine to one of its crew. Ayel/OFC. Not angsty.


**This is based on the idea that Nero and Co. never got captured by the Klingons and instead spent their time hanging around the galaxy kidnapping cartographers in order to determine when Spock was going to appear.**

**This whole scenario mostly came about because of the scene with Kirk (depicted in the pic above) where Ayel was really confident and cocky (right up until he got shot! :D) and I wondered whether that confidence would be there in other areas too ;)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek :'(**

***/*/*/***

Kamarla had been taken from her cell, but hadn't been delivered to what Heindrick (her captain) had described as the Romulan's 'torture chamber'.

Instead, she'd been marched along several equally dark passageways before being unceremoniously shoved inside _this_ room.

It was a bedroom, but a very sparse one. Beyond sparse actually, it was practically bare. The only reason she labelled it as a bedroom at all was because there was a bed in the far corner and another door which appeared to lead to a bathroom.

Before she has time to dwell on the implications of her being left her alone here, or even to start snooping, she hears the door behind her opening.

She spins around to face whoever's just entered.

_Oh… it's him_. The Romulan. One of them anyway. The young one. Well, he looked younger than the rest at any rate. And he was also the one who'd made a habit to stare at her whenever he happened to be near the cells that her and her crewmates were being kept in.

There's a vague notion in the back of her head that she should, possibly, be more nervous about the situation she currently found herself in. But in her… 'line of work' you never got anywhere by being nervous and she'd been in far worse situations than this. Her mind recalls the image of the gigantic Romulan ship tugging their tiny cruiser towards them like a cat would tug a mouse… _Well, she'd certainly been in _different_ situations to this_.

The Romulan – wasn't his name _Ale_, or something? – stops just inside the entrance and looks at her. She looks back.

That goes on for about a minute.

Until she finally gets bored and asks,

"Why am I here?" _As in, up here in a Romulan's bedroom as opposed to being in my cell, or strapped to a table somewhere with a set nasty-looking instruments lined up next to me._

Ale the Romulan doesn't miss a beat,

"You're here because we commandeered your vessel," he answers in a voice that sounded smugly amused.

She inwardly rolls her eyes.

"Funny," she drawls, entirely insincerely, "I never knew Romulan's had such a sense of humour."

"We have our moments," is his reply. He seemed to be enjoying this miniature bantering session. _Geez, these Romulan's were weird. Not only did they fly around in a ship that really did take the piss out of the whole 'bigger is better' philosophy, but their captain was clearly as barmy as a box of rampant tribbles, yet they still followed him as if he were the source of all enlightenment. Weird._

They go back to staring at each other. This time, he's the one to break the silence.

"I like your hair," he says as his black eyes rise to linger appreciatively over the bright redness of her curls.

"Thanks, I like yours too," she replies with biting irony, taking the odd direction of the conversation in her stride.

A flash of whitest teeth quickly devolves into a smirk. Then he's walking towards her, or maybe _prowling_ would be the right description, his head lowered just slightly but his gaze remaining completely focused, never diverting from her.

She's beginning to get a fairly accurate idea of why she's here. While this group of Romulans hadn't been the worst jailors her and her comrades had ever encountered, that didn't mean that she was willing to show her gratitude in any physical sense of the term.

He arrives before her. His scent – which she hadn't been close enough to pick up on until now – was an odorous mix of chemicals laced with a tangy undertone of metal, but mostly it consisted of an almost-spicy musk. It was nice. Kind of heady, but nice. She breathes it in whilst betraying no emotion through her face. _Just because she didn't want to sample the food, didn't mean she couldn't enjoy the aroma._

While she'd made a point of _not_ showing that she was sniffing him, Ale the Romulan evidently didn't have any such qualms. His tattooed face draws nearer to hers. Because of their height difference this meant that it brought his nose level with her hairline. She hears him take a deep inhalation. _It'd probably smell better if you'd allowed me and the others to have access to some showers over the past three days_, she thinks drily.

It didn't seem to bother him though as, after the first one, he sucks in another hearty lungful. She feels his head moving closer to the riotous (and always woefully unmanageable) curls atop her head.

"I never thought a human's scent would smell quite so good," he comments idly, before reaching out to pick up a particularly thick lock of fiery red strands, rubbing them together between his tattooed fingers.

"_Half _human, thank you very much," she says sternly.

His eyes divert from her hair back to her face. An already raised eyebrow rises higher in piqued interest.

"What's the other half?" he questions.

"Gorn," she replies, with a completely deadpan expression. She's sees the white teeth again as her comment draws an actual laugh from him.

"I doubt that," he states.

His black eyes turn more scrutinising as they traverse her features once again, trying to find evidence of her claim.

"You look human," he finally says.

"Well, there are some things you can't change, no matter how hard you try."

"Tell me what your other half is." This time his tone resembles much more that of a demand. She doesn't hesitate in her reply,

"Ferengi."

She sees consternation flicker across his brow, but then he seems to shrug it off, his voice reverting back to its oddly nuanced smoothness. He circles around her stationary form. She feels his fingers alighting over her shoulders in a sensual flutter.

"Maybe there's a way I can find out," he murmurs. He comes to stand behind her and the fingers dance their way along the top of her spine, causing a prickling shiver – one that's thankfully hidden beneath the thick fabric of her tunic. Even so, she thinks she should probably put a stop to… this.

She turns around on her heel, bringing her face back towards his unperturbed one.

"Are you going to give us our ship back?" she asks in a no-nonsense tone.

"My Captain is determining whether there's anything that might be useful to us."

"It took us a long time to source all that equipment. I do hope he's planning to _pay us_ if he does 'determine' that something is useful." _This was the trouble that came with being a smuggler and having a big load on board – it invariably brought the wrong sort of attention._

"We might spare your lives," Ale the Romulan replies lazily.

His response wasn't comforting, but at the same time, it was far more reasonable than many others she'd dealt with in her time.

"What do you need any equipment for anyway?" she challenges after a contemplating pause. "Surely this…" _monstrosity_ "ship has more than enough of anything you could possibly require." The labyrinth-esque vessel was practically a colony all by itself.

The young devil leans back towards her in order to pick up another wayward curl before saying,

"Not quite, I'm finding."

Her words had been purely objective; his had been something quite different.

Her voice is blithe as she responds, "Oh, been seven years has it? Isn't that the way it works with your, ah, _particular physiology_? Seven years as cold as ice and then a few days in heat?"

The eyes before her abruptly turn several shades darker. "We. Are. Not. Vulcan."

"Wasn't saying you were, just that you shared some… _similarities_." The intensity of those eyes doesn't lessen. "But, right, yeah… Sorry." Despite her words, she's unable to resist showing a hint of the smile that's pulling at her lips. Heindrick always prophesised that her innate need to antagonise everyone around her would (sooner rather than later) ultimately lead to her demise, but she just hadn't been able to help herself. She didn't like being in the weaker position and as such it made her naturally defiant nature assert itself even more.

"You're very contrary, even though we are the ones with all the power," Ale observes, though his manner isn't overtly threatening.

"You keep saying 'we'," she counters back. "Are there others who are planning on joining this little soirée that you've set up, or is it just you and me?"

His closes in on her again, his scent invading her senses once more.

"I assure you, it's just you and me," he practically purrs.

"And what does 'you and me' actually entail?" _May as well get right down to it, since he didn't seem to be letting it go._

"You and me entails… you and me." His eyes don't leave hers and his voice remains shamelessly uninhibited as it continues, "In this room. On that bed." Then his tone lowers to a softer note, "…I think I am pleasing to you."

"Do you now?"

"I do."

_Arrogant little bastard, aren't you?_ Though she couldn't honestly call his words… untrue. Ever since she'd first laid eyes on him, there'd been something that had made him stand out as different from the rest – to her, anyway.

"Look," she says reasonably, "while I can't claim to have had no… _indiscretions_ in my time, I'm not about to go sleeping with my captor. I'm not quite in Stockholm yet."

Confusion flickers across the tattooed features at the distinctly human terminology and she inwardly grins; a confused Romulan looked almost… cute.

"I could ensure you have a more… _pleasant_ stay aboard." Now this was where it got more worthwhile: _Bargaining_.

She weighs him up with her gaze, an action not unfamiliar to her, albeit it one that she normally employed in a far different form of negotiation.

"I can have your assurance on that?" she presses, wanting confirmation.

"You're not Federation–"

"Damn right," she agrees with dark vehemence.

"–so we have no particular quarrel with you. I'm certain I could get my captain to show leniency."

_If you say so_, she thinks dubiously, remembering her brief interactions with the insane nutbag that they called a 'captain'. All the same, Ale's offer was tempting, mostly because her and her little crew had no other options. It was either this or some highly dangerous escape attempt that would probably wind up with half of them getting killed, if history was anything to go by.

She weighs her options while the horny Ale gives into temptation and raises his hand to start playing with her hair again.

"And you'd do all this out of the goodness of your heart?" she finally simpers out, with a mockingly false innocence.

He realises they were back to bantering and answers in kind,

"That… and a little compensation."

"May I ask why?" she says, choosing to be courteous for once because she was genuinely intrigued. "I've seen female Romulans on board – why come to me?" _Why offer this arrangement in the first place?_

"I like you," is his (surprisingly heart-warming) statement, said with an almost guileless honesty that he evidently felt no need to hide. "I like your hair," he goes on, as if she'd asked for further explanation. "It's different to anything else I've ever seen." As if unable to help himself, he reaches out his other hand to take hold of another curl. 'Different' was putting it mildly; it was a swarming mass of contrary spirals that were such a vibrant red, it almost hurt the eyes to look at them. But she supposed that, compared to having no hair at all, it may provide something of a curiosity...

She lets out a sigh whilst giving him an appraising look. As far as bargains went, let's just say she could imagine worse. And though she'd never been attracted to the pointy-eared kind before – finding them lacking in a variety of ways – she couldn't deny that this particular one before her did have a certain… charm about him.

"What's your name?" she finally asks.

"Ayel," he replies.

"Ale?!" She hadn't thought that was his _actual name_.

"A_**y**_el." He puts an extra emphasis on the Y.

"Oh, that makes more sense," she mutters, mostly to herself. She'd wondered why such a proud society would name one of their people after a type of booze.

His fingers had finished with their caressing of single curls and were now gently burrowing their way into the centre of her twisted and coiled mass of tresses. She briefly considers warning him that, once they were in, he was likely going to find it more than difficult to get them out again, but before she can do so his fingertips reach her scalp and begin… _massaging_ her head, sending deliciously sensual transmissions down the rest of her body.

Before she can stop it, she's let out a 'Hmmm' of pleasure at the sensation, her eyes going heavy-lidded as he works away the tension that she hadn't even realised she'd been holding. What a weird way to go about seduction… Not to mention the fact that she hadn't showered for three days which meant her hair was not at its freshest. Though, if she were being honest, his fingers hadn't looked all that sparkling either, so it was unlikely he cared about it.

She allows herself to revel in his attentions for a while longer – not a hard feat by any means – before commenting,

"I'd say you've done this before."

"Actually, no… But I like the way your hair feels around my hands."

Strange. Because it had felt so good, she'd kind-of assumed it was some secret Romulan trick to lure the unwary into bed. Apparently, it was just that Ayel had a hair fetish. Oh, well.

"Glad to hear it," she murmurs absentmindedly. _Wow, his fingers felt good – they were like mini hot-plates_. Then a thought strikes her and she peels her eyelids back open to peer up at him. She notes that he's drawn even closer. "I thought Romulan's were, essentially, cold-blooded; why do your fingers feel warm?"

"Part of our physiology," he replies matter-of-factly, but in a voice that told her he didn't really care to discuss it further. His gaze was lingering over her features, watching with seductive intent to see which part of his massaging yielded the most un-suppressible shivers-cum-breathy-moans.

Without warning, the pressure of the kneading pads of his fingers increases, making the delicious tingles turn into full-on frissons of rapture, causing her to all but swoon.

She draws back her lids once more to find dark, dark eyes watching her now with a completely hungry expression. Warm breath is blowing out over her lips, the scent from before even stronger as it envelops each one of her senses.

_Ah, what the hell – even if he did renege on his word, at least she could say she _tried_. And that bed looked far comfier than the floor she'd been sitting on for the past three days…_

Not even a second later, she's grabbed hold of his bald head and crashed her lips up to his.

He doesn't hesitate in responding, practically crushing her mouth as his tongue plunges inside – and _god_, she'd thought his scent had been heady but it was nothing compared to his _taste_. From the way his tongue was diving for every part that it could reach, she guessed that he found hers not so bad either.

A battle for dominance is waged between both their mouths as her hands clutch even more fiercely around his head. _My, there was something to be said about pure, unadulterated lust. And it had been a long while since she'd felt it quite so potently…_

By some miracle he manages to not only extricate his fingers from her hair, but does so without causing her even the slightest discomfort – not even one hair is pulled uncomfortably. _God, his hands must be very talented_. Using said hands, he grabs hold of her waist, tightly, and is then hastily impelling her backwards towards the bed.

"Wait a minute," she gasps, forcibly breaking her mouth away from his. He blinks in surprise and had she not had other things on her mind, she would've laughed at the dismayed disappointment that burst into his features.

She jerks her head towards the door on her left.

"Is there a shower in there?" she asks, sounding rather out of breath, her lips still burning from his kiss.

Slight lines of confusion cross the tattooed forehead as Ayel answers,

"Yes…"

"Great – we're going in there first." She doesn't give him chance to speak before wrenching his body round in the direction of the door. He doesn't quite stumble but she can tell he's more than a little surprised, as evidenced by his next comment – said in a tone that intimated both interest and a sense of excited anticipation.

"You're remarkably strong for a human."

"_Half!_" she snaps, before using her strength once more to yank his head back down to hers…

…

Two weeks later and the crew of the _Amora_ are finally allowed back on board their own ship. Kamarla's the last one on board, having been… _delayed_ slightly.

Heindrick gives her a look as she hurries onto the bridge to take her familiar chair at the helm.

"Urgh, you don't even wanna _know_ what I had to go through in order to get us off this ship," she says with a greatly emphasized air of long-suffering as she sets about making some hasty pre-flight checks.

"You're right, I don't," Heindrick answers drolly from the captains seat. "I can still smell _Romulan_ on you." As if to emphasize the point, the lizard-skinned man's already-large nostrils flare even more.

"Hmm, I wonder why he didn't ask for me," Sepher, their Orion 'liaison' officer asks from her station, as if she'd been pondering on the concept for a while. Knowing her, she probably had.

"Maybe he prefers red to green?" Malton pipes up from the other console, before his head turns to Kamarla. "Still at least it gave you some experience, eh?"

"If you think I'm going to start 'bargaining' like Sepher does, you've got another thing coming," Kamarla says firmly.

"Well, what was all that about then?" Malton demands confusedly, waving a webbed hand in the vague direction of the window, through which could be seen the _Narada's_ hanger bay, and somewhere beyond, a certain Romulan who she'd gotten to know very, _very_ well.

"That was necessity," she retorts, before adding, mostly to herself, "…And a very cute Romulan."

Malton's responding gagging noise is quickly overridden by Heindrick's sibilant but strong voice,

"Enough, all of you. Kamarla lay in a course: For the furthest point of space that's _away_ from this ship."

Her lips stretch into a grin,

"Aye, Captain," she replies, inputting the necessary coordinates into the old but reliable computer.

Sure enough, the Romulan's stay true to their word and the _Amora_ is able to leave the hanger bay free and clear, heading back out into the deepness of space, to the relief of all on board.

Just before they go to warp, Karmarla looks down to the viewscreen on her console. She sees the massiveness of the _Narada_ behind them, all black and green menace. She thinks on her time aboard and knows that their little crew got off very lightly, no doubt far lighter than many others who had and will encounter the same vessel... She hadn't managed to wheedle much information out of Ayel – he was far too loyal to his captain and remarkably astute, despite her various distraction techniques – but she knew without doubt that the _Narada's_ purpose and its captain had far greater plans in mind than just drifting through space picking off unwary travellers. She knew that their end goal was… _something beyond imagining_. Something she's sure that, if fulfilled, will change the shape of the universe for a long, long time, maybe even forever.

Yet even though she knows this, as her eyes take one last look she can't help but think,

_I hope your captain doesn't get you killed, Ayel._

As their warp engines take them far out of sight of the ship, Kamarla wonders if she will ever see her cute Romulan again…

*/*/*/*/*/*

**A/N: Rather random I know. Particularly since everyone's into John Harrison/Khan at the mo – not that I can blame them! But, what can I say? After seeing ST:ID, I felt the need to watch Star Trek:2009 which then renewed my love of Romulans. As such, I went back to an old Nero fic, trying to finish it, but it was so depressing (isn't everything with Nero depressing?!) that I kept breaking off and writing this – because I wanted to give Ayel a little love too ;P **

**Other notes: Kamarla's the only 'human' on board the Amora (think Serenity but with aliens), has very few morals and is older than Ayel.**

**Thanks for reading. Live Long and Prosper :)**


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